


... and they hold hands.

by sunsetroots



Series: We Can Wander [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Holding Hands, Immortality, Polyamory, Post-Episode: s04e06 The Doctor's Daughter, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, and talk about those deaths that aren't really deaths anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-23 18:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6125788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetroots/pseuds/sunsetroots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara's technically dead and yet still living, Jenny's got two hearts and doesn't know whether they still even work for her or not and Me can't stop her body from healing itself and dragging her back to life over and over again. They're all immortal (or near enough) in their own ways and somehow these three ancient, immortal women find home in each other and in the adventures they chase together. </p>
<p>(A story in ten parts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	... and they hold hands.

First:

Clara meets a girl called Ashildr and they’re both young and their eyes are bright and there's a warm smile on both of their faces.

When they part they’re still made of smiles and bright eyes because they don’t know what’s to come.

(" _Dying is an ability_ ," the Doctor tells her. She doesn't understand but she will.)

 

Second:

Jenny's ship is in need of some serious repairs, ones she can handle herself if she has the right equipment. She stops off on an asteroid and it's the longest she's been in one place without trouble showing up for a while.

She's leaning against the back wall in a rundown bar one night and there's a brown haired woman with a cute nose and an even cuter laugh looking at a stool as if she's not sure whether she should actually get on it or not.

Jenny flicks her hair off her shoulder and sidles over to her with a lopsided grin and a quirked eyebrow.  

The woman tells her that her name is Oswin and Jenny easily offers her own name in return, the two of them retreating and sliding into a booth with matching smiles.

“I'm not really a whole person,” Oswin admits later, back in Jenny's rented room where their voices are low and quiet, Oswin's fingers playing in Jenny's hair and her warm body pressed up against her side. “I don't know _why_ I know," she continues softly, "but there's a version of me out there that _did_ something to... to  _make_ me...” she mumbles something incoherent, then falls silent again for a moment before she whispers, “I'm just a... an echo of her.”

“You're amazing,” Jenny says immediately, wondering if she’s from one of the few cloning clans that're still in operation. She tightens her arms around Oswin's waist and presses a kiss to her temple. “You are brilliant and whole and you are your own person. There is  _no one_ like you.”

Oswin laughs and it’s so cold and bitter and horribly, intimately _familiar_ that Jenny's hand clenches into a fist where it presses against her back. Oswin must feel it as she kisses her softly and Jenny eventually relaxes into her touch. 

(They don't talk again for a while, the only sounds the rustling of sheets and irregular breathing and a lone engine starting up outside.)

 

Third:

Jenny smiles warmly up at her and asks her if she's free to join her on her travels. Oswin just smiles back, leans over to press a lingering kiss to Jenny's lips before she says that she'd love to but no, she has a job waiting for her on a starship, she has the _stars themselves_ waiting for her. 

(Jenny nods graciously and never forgets Oswin's face as it is in that moment - eyes wide and sparkling with wonder and a tilt of excitement to her lips.)

 

Fourth:

The Doctor forgets her, and so Clara must go and live her death alone… or perhaps not. " _There's a tiny little bit of wiggle room,"_ after all.

Me has already seen the end of the universe, lived through its passing and still manages to stay marginally good. Could there ever be a better companion?

They slip into the same routine she and the Doctor used to have - as many planets and times as they want, all of space and history outside their own two doors. Clara and Me are different though, different to Clara and the Doctor, in the sense that Me is not Clara's companion, not the friend that pops in every Wednesday to take you to see the Queen of another planet that’s been burnt to ash for thousands of years. Clara and the Doctor had been good friends in the end and Clara had truly loved him, but they'd _worked_ at it. 

Clara and Me are friends, equals from the beginning, the two of them wearied by their own lives and they set about owning their place in the universe as they'd _earnt_ it.

(And she felt they'd both earnt it _at least_ twice over.)

 

Fifth:

Jenny visits an old planet with a nice market and a festival that bathes the streets with light to celebrate the memory of one of their most famous historical commanders. It's there that she sees an old ghost and she starts running to her.

(She still loves the running.)

 

Sixth:

Clara and Me visit a planet with a busy market and a street made of light. A blonde woman literally _runs_ into Clara and she looks at Clara like she knows her.

Maybe she does.

"Oswin?" she asks and Clara realises after a moments confusion that it’s not _her_ that she knows.

She has the sudden realisation of how incredible it is that in _all_ of time and space she's never run into one of her echoes before. Now here she is confronted with someone that’d known one of them – one of _her._

She quickly thinks back, searching her memories because sometimes she remembers things from her other lives - only bits and pieces, faces here and there but it's something if she thinks hard enough.

“Jenny, right?” she asks, because she _does_ remember those eyes and a smile that’s surrounded by light and strong arms around her. She remembers the pain, the anguish coming and a harsh robotic voice screaming in her ear and _she's human she's human she is -_

A hand on her shoulder brings her back and she blinks, she's _Clara_ not Oswin and she's standing on an alien planet under an ancient sun not entrapped in casing and half insane. 

“I’m not… really Oswin,” she says quickly, scratching a spot just under her elbow. “I mean, I _am_ and she was me, but I’m not… her.”

Jenny looks like she’s on the edge of confused but she nods. “Alright,” she says softly and Clara thinks she looks like she's trying not to look bothered and failing miserably. The smile that Clara remembers from Oswin comes slowly a moment later and Clara holds back a flinch at the sight of it, echoes of pain running down her spine.  

“I can explain…” Clara says, glancing over her shoulder to give Me a look and waves three fingers. Me nods back at Clara and Clara turns back to Jenny and offers her a hand, realising Jenny’s still half collapsed against a high table from when they'd knocked into each other. “If you’re not busy or…?”

Jenny shakes her head and Clara smiles, leading her back through the lights and the bustling crowd to the TARDIS where Me is awaiting them.

Me knows about Clara’s past lives, she’d explained years ago, one night in the TARDIS before they’d retreated to their room to sleep. Of course, Clara doesn’t _need_ to sleep now she’s dead but she does it anyway, glad she’s still physically able. If she’d had to go without sleep and eating she probably wouldn’t have bothered evading the Time Lords and would’ve just gone back to face the Raven.

Me feels the same, but she doesn't have the opt out option, doesn't have the Raven to go back to if things come to be too much.

(Clara breathes.)

 

Seventh:

Clara breathes even though she doesn't need to, the action calming and the hand that isn’t still holding Jenny’s is taken gently by Me’s, and it’s the three of them standing in a wonky triangle holding hands in their bright TARDIS. She realises Me and Jenny are holding hands too and appreciates it, appreciates them supporting each other even though they don't really know each other. Little acts of kindness between strangers make her living death a fraction easier.  

She explains carefully, steadied by the palms that are pressed against hers and she tells Jenny about her past, how she ended up splintered along the Doctor’s life, how she ended up eventually forgotten and dead and yet still, in a way, alive.

Jenny is silent through it all and when she speaks the silence extends to Clara and Me.

“You know my dad?” she asks and her eyes are wide with something akin to hope.

(Clara stares back, speechless and her hands tighten where they’re gripping onto the others.) 

 

Eighth:

Jenny joins them.

(In everything.)

 

Ninth:

They reunite Jenny with her father but Me and Clara stay back. They’ve had their time with that man and Clara can’t risk it, can’t risk him remembering. Me doesn't really want anything to do with him but that's beside the point. 

She stays in the TARDIS with Clara and they watch a series of stupid films and when Jenny comes back she’s grinning and she spills over with excited, rushed speech telling them the story of what her and the Doctor got up to and she has a slip of paper with a time and a date and a set of coordinates for when they've agreed to next meet. She pins it to the magnet-board in the console room, pins it next to an old-fashioned photograph of the three of them grinning madly on a beach somewhere.

She’ll pick up that slip of paper, put in those coordinates one day when she wants to see him again but there’s no rush.

(After all, the four of them are immortal, or near enough. They have _nothing but_ time.)

 

Tenth:

The three of them walk down a corridor hand in hand in a creepy base on a supposedly uninhabited planet, thousands of years before Me and Clara are due to be born and billions of galaxies across from Jenny’s birthplace.

They breathe in the dust left behind by some unknown and they grin and cry and _feel_ as they watch sparks fly across the sky through the tall transparent walls.

They hold hands, and they feel and they run and run – away from things and _to_ them, and sometimes just for the hell of running. Jenny’s always loved it and Me’s been running from things her whole immortal life and Clara’s been running _for_ things her whole life and they fit together so well, the three of them linked by their loves - once for the same man, and for space and history and adventure, and now for each other and the life they have built together.

The Doctor once told Clara that immortality didn't mean living forever (he was right, her immortality was tinged and tainted with death and loss and pain and grief). He had said that one day Ashildr might find someone she couldn't bear to lose. Thinking back on his words now Clara _knows_ he was right - there were people in her ever-long death, people that she would willingly go and face the Raven for, but it was _Jenny and Me,_ and their travels and their love that makes her want to _stay,_ that makes her thankful sometimes that her heart remains still within her, that her blood _doesn't_ flow.

Without her immortality they would be alone with themselves once more and she doesn't want that for them, they deserve more than that.

She worries. She worries about Me. One day, she might be _forced_ to face the Raven, she may have no choice. She knows this.

Jenny could die. They don't know if she even _regenerates_ yet, haven't exactly wanted to test the theory.

Which would mean that Me would one day be left alone in this harsh and beautiful universe.

So Clara worries and she knows Jenny does too and knows Me worries more than the two of them put together. They talk about it when it's bad and they breathe and hold hands and curl around each other until they're sort of okay again.

The truth of it is that Me can cope with it, _will_ cope with it because she'll have to, she'll have to continue on alone one day.

None of the three of them think about this. They force themselves not to.

They run and they _feel_ and they love and they hold hands and they try not to give up or look back but sometimes they do and that’s ok because they have the other two to hold them up and push them on and they’re _okay_.

(And that’s enough. That's more than enough.)

**Author's Note:**

> I've put this up as a series because I have so many ideas/feelings about these three(/+oswin=four?/+the doc=five?) and it might be expanded upon one day. 
> 
> The stuff about some of Clara's echoes feeling lesser/remembering bits and pieces about their 'original' lives and the thought of Clara remembering some of her past lives makes me really emotional and I think about it a lot. Also how Clara _works_ now she's dead?? Like the sleep thing - _can_ she sleep? Does she? What about eating? When she runs her heart can't beat faster, she can't be at a loss for breath. How does she cope with this stuff? 
> 
> Also Jenny and how does she feel about _technically_ being a clone of the Doctor? Does she think about it? Can she regenerate or was she just brought back by the Source that one time and so that's it she only has this body to live through? As Clara and Me have finite human memories would she be left floundering every so often, having to explain to the two of them things they've done, people they've loved because Me and Clara forget so much?
> 
> _What would happen if the three of them met Jack?_ Or Amy and Rory and River? Or any of the other companions?
> 
> Would they eventually get to the stage where they try and reverse each of their immortalities and die their deaths? Or would they be content for eternity? 
> 
> I could go on and on hence the fact I made this a series because I need answers and the show's not gonna give me them so.... 
> 
> Absurdly long note over.


End file.
